Gerardo Alejos Victoria

My parents took me to see Tito Puente's Latin Orchestra in my hometown, Mérida, when my mother was 6-7 months pregnant, so maybe jazz got into me before I was actually born. My serious passion developed in the late 1990's after listening to John Coltrane's Live at Birdland while being drunk at some friend's car. Very generously, my friend gave me the Coltrane CD and I listened to it every night for the following two months. Then another friend sent me a copy of Keith Jarrett's Köln Concert and thus began another three-month period of listening to it every night before falling asleep, until Jarrett finally appeared in a dream and revealed to me that the Köln Concert's real name was the Purple concert.

Right now I teach a jazz history class, have an online jazz radio show and work as the communications and repertory director of the Yucatán Jazz Festival, besides working full-time as a lawyer for the State of Yucatán and as a legal translator.

Any parties interested in performing at the Yucatán Jazz fest (held every year in March) should feel free to contact me at my email address above. Past performers have included French clarinetist Louis Sclavis, sax player Sylvain Beuf, accordionist Marc Berthoumieux, guitar player Louis Martinez and the electro-jazz ensemble Wise, Cuban sax player Carlos Averhoff (one of the founders of Irakere) and a myriad of Mexican jazz musicians.